Piano quartets are rare enough; ensembles formed specifically to play them even rarer. Espressivo! – Jaime Laredo, violin, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola,...
There are chefs who excel in both baking and cooking just as there are musicians, such as Yo-Yo Ma and Peter Serkin, who excel at interpreting classical music scores and improvising over a jazz chart.
Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Winds and String Instruments (1878) evokes the 18th century, late-baroque, tradition of outdoor performances on the grounds of the nobility’s castles for the amusement of both the aristocracy and its serfs.
Stucky’s aim in “Dialoghi” isn’t to torment the cellist. Instead, he intends to endow the cellist with novel powers of expressivity. In this, Stucky succeeds admirably.
“Beethoven’s work,” Yudkin explains, “is of such a stature that it warrants constant reviewing and research. We’re dealing here with a genius of the highest purpose, someone on a par with William Shakespeare.”
Soyeon Kate Lee’s delivery of Scriabin’s Op. 28 is so manifestly heartfelt that it would be difficult to say whether she owns the piece or is possessed by it.
“We feel it our duty to hand down the old treasures of Musical Culture to American Youth. Enriched by this culture, the Young People of America will carry it further to new achievement.”
-- Serge Koussevitsky, upon the opening of Tanglewood Music Center in 1940
“Throughout my life I have envisioned the establishment of a great music and art center in the world. The United States of America can and are destined to have such a center. American freedom is the best soil for it.”
-- Serge Koussevitzky
Lenox -- Ludwig van Beethoven inscribed his last string quartet, “The hard-won resolution” (Der schwer gefasste Entschluss). Toward the end of its second, final...
"The combined institution creates in one stroke the most comprehensive training ground for performing arts and related careers in the country, if not the world."
-- Boston Conservatory president Richard Ortner, describing the proposed merger of the Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory
Jeannette Sorrell, harpsichordist and passionate conductor of Apollo's Fire, considers "the most distinctive thing about our style is that we are really focused on the concept of Affekt, the idea that the music is there to move the emotional mood of the listeners.
